IT Question of the Week |
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Hello boys and girls and welcome to another IT question of the week (insert theme music here). Today, we are going to talk about something pretty simple that plagues a lot of people, long start up times, and general annoyances when you first log into your computer.
A lot of people don’t realize that you honestly have full control to almost everything your computer does. The first tip would be; Pay Attention. I don’t know how many times someone has told me, “…I don’t know where that Farmville, Facebook, MySpace, etc. toolbar came from…” When you install software that you might need or want it almost always says do you also want to install X. Software companies use this as a simple way to make money as they realize most people don’t pay attention. In general, watch for check boxes when installing your favorite apps. Don’t let things install in the system tray, or the quick start. I go as far as to not let things install desktop icons as there is nothing worse than a cluttered desktop.
So what if it’s already too late? What if your machine takes 20 minutes to boot up and your system tray (the part by the clock on the right) is stretching across the screen? Never fear, there are things that you can do. First off and more simply you can just hide inactive icons. This isn’t going to do much for your performance, but at least it will clean up your desktop appearance. To hide icons in the system tray simple right click on the taskbar, and go to properties. On the bottom of this screen you can click hide inactive icons and then press customize. With that you can customize the notification of every one of your applications. We also can do another number of simple fixes to a cluttered desktop. If you right click anywhere on the desktop screen and go to properties. Then, go to the appearance tab and click advanced appearance you can customize the spacing between your icons. If you need 100 copies of your resume on your desktop in easy reach then at least you can see behind them to the picture of your dog.
Now let’s try and tackle performance issues. Most programs simply have a setting in their ‘options’ to turn on at startup. If you turn that off you can normally cut off the problem at the source. If you cannot find it in the programs or maybe if that’s not an option you can shut them off at the window level. To do this, you need to use a tool called MSConfig. MsConfig is a utility used to troubleshoot the windows startup process. It has been bundled with windows since windows 98 with a brief hiatus in windows 2000. To access msconfig go to; start->run->msconfig. This will bring up a simple GUI. At this point don’t worry about everything else in it and just go to the startup tab. From this tab you can shut off as many executables you want that are set to start when windows starts. It might seem big and confusing. To make it easier I normally sort by the command column. This will give you the location of the executable and normally the name of the program. Anything you don’t want, just uncheck the box. After this restart your machine and you shouldn’t have to worry about that software till you want to.
There is a lot to be said for treating your computer like you would your house. Don’t clutter it up with boxes or junk and it’ll work nice and fast. Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
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It’s that time of week again. No, it’s not time for you to leave work and play more DCUO. It’s time for another IT qotw. As you all probably already know I am an IT guy by trade. You’d think that by the end of the day I get tired of it. But, I still try to do a little work on the side and I always am the go to go for the family’s computer questions. Today, I wanted to talk about the question that I probably get the most. “What can I do to maintain the performance of my computer?”
First off, realize that question is an excellent step. No matter how awesome your new computer is, it really does fall on you to keep it that way. Just by browsing the internet your computer will slow down. There are a ton of other things you can do to make it slower. However you don’t want to be one of those people that put their head in the sand and believe their computer is invincible. Don’t be the guy that ignores all the ‘…little read icons and warnings by the clock thingy…’ Don’t be afraid though, there is hope. There are some very simple things you can do to not only keep your PC from breaking needlessly, but also keep you from losing your files.
The first thing that you must get into a good habit with is backing up data. With the cost of external hard drives going down and the size going up I always recommend people buying at least one. A good rule of thumb is back up your data as often as you can afford to lose it. You really do never know what could go wrong with your computer. Just like your car, there is a ton of moving parts. Most of the time when your machine goes it does so fast and without warning. You can do a simple copy paste up to your external drive every time you download picture from Christmas or buy 100 songs off of iTunes. Or, you can use the Windows backup utility to do it automatically when you go to work, or when you go to sleep.
The next thing I would recommend is keep your machine updated. Update, update, update. Windows is constantly releasing updates to their products. While this is mostly because a lot of them are incomplete and the updates are to fix security problem, it doesn’t mean they are any less good for your computer. You should also definitely have antivirus software (ms security essentials is easy, has a very small footprint, and is free), and you need to keep that software updated. Antivirus software is literally only as good as the amount of updates you have. Virus software mostly works on scanning your machine for known files that are used with known viruses. That unfortunately changes all the time as people are constantly writing new viruses.
The next few thing can be lumped together, especially since all you loyal readers already know all about defragmentation. You should definitely defragment your machine at least once a month. This closes gaps in your file structure and will make read time on your hard drive faster. Along with that you should be clearing the cache on whatever browser you decide to use. By the cache I mean that browsers will keep copies of files, cookies that track your browsing patterns and pictures on your machine in order to make it easier the next time you visit a site. After months of not cleaning it, a full cache will cause very noticeable issues with your machine. To do this with internet explorer you can go to start->settings->control panel->internet options. On the general tab, in browsing history just press delete and select everything you can find with a check box.
Finally, and maybe the most simply, buy a good quality surge protector to have your computer plugged into. Electricity is the enemy. Even the most benign surge can fry the very sensitive boards that exist on your computer.
There is a lot more that we can go into. But, this is a good start. If you follow these steps, not only will your computer stay fast longer. If it ever happens to crash for no reason, you won’t lose as much data and time as you would have. Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
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So today’s IT question of the week comes from my own experience. My wife recently got into audio visual scrapbooking with Adobe Premiere. She essentially taught it to herself, once again validating that she is the most awesome wife ever. Over the weekend we needed to make some hardware changes to her machine to accommodate the Pyro A/V Link video converter that she was borrowing from her father.
Now being loyal readers you all probably have the answer right on the tip of your tongue. ‘…You got her a FireWire card…’ As you remember, FireWire, or the IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus interface for high speed, real time communication. It is the standard for any sort of video transfer. That’s why we needed it to take the old precious memories off of her VHS and Hi8 tapes and put them on the computer for her movie making pleasure. Now while all that is very interesting it is not the point of the article. While I was installing and configuring the FireWire card I was explaining what I was doing to my wife. That’s why I thought today we could talk about PCI and how it’s made installing expansion cards in a desktop easy.
PCI is an abbreviation for, Peripheral Component Interconnect. If you’ve ever taken the cover off your desktop, they are the 2 section while slots down in the corner of your motherboard. They are 32-bit computer buses used for attaching hardware devices into a computer. Work on PCI was developed by Intel back in 1990. It’s had 3 full iterations between then and 2002 when PCI 3.0 was released.
PCI is so easy because along with plug and play drivers it essentially takes care of installing itself. It provides separate memory and I/O port address spaces. This allows software to determine the amount of memory and I/O space that it needs. Also they normally have their own firmware or drivers so that they can work before the operating system starts.
Most motherboards now come with PCI-E slots. In 2004, it was designed to replace the older motherboard CardBus standards including PCI and AGP. PCI-E’s capacity is much faster than its older counterparts. PCI-E 3.0 which came out this past November is able to transfer at 1 GB/s per lane with normally 16 lanes in a card. This is why PCI-E has become a standard for new video cards.
If you have an interest in learning the inner workings of your machine, the first thing I would suggest is getting comfortable with the hardware. Make sure to unplug your computer, open it up, and learn what everything is and where it goes and what it connects to. Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
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Hi again, and welcome back to the IT guy’s, question of the week. After the long Christmas hiatus I decided to start with something less boring then just explanations on some computer jargon. Today is the start of one of the biggest tech weekends of every year. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 starts today and goes through Sunday. We at It’s Geektime would have of course went; but it’s in Las Vegas and we are poor.
For the last 7 years the CES has been held in Las Vegas. But, this show has been going on since 1967. Every major tech innovation, from Pong to the HDTV to Blu-ray was released by their respective companies at this show.
The buzz at this year’s CES is tablets. It has been nearly a year since the iPad was released by Apple. Even though I am personally not a fan; probably due to my Appleproductism™. The iPad has taken the tech market by storm and every manufacturer wants to create something that can compete. The one major competitor is the Android-based Samsung Galaxy tablet. HP has finally shipped its Windows 7 HP Slate. However, there is very little interest for an OS that at its core really wants a keyboard and a mouse.
There are a lot of very exciting things slated to be released at the convention this year. Motorola is sure to show off their new 4g Android phone, The Bionic. Sony is pushing for 3D televisions that do not require glasses. Kenmore is going to have appliances that will be able to interface with the internet. And of course, there is word that Microsoft is going to show off Windows 8.
At this point, the show hasn’t started yet so we’ll see what companies are keeping under their sleeves and what will be the biggest release at the biggest tech show of the year. It is amazing that we live in a world where all the tech fantasies of 20 years ago are becoming a reality. Soon our brains will be hard-drives and we’ll be able to access the internet with our thoughts al la the 1995 Sci-fi thriller Johnny Mnemonic.
Next week’s article will probably be some sort of wrap up to the CES and people thoughts on what was released. But as always, if you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
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And now, it’s time for something completely different. While questions from our users are always awesome, this week we are going to start the ‘Things IT Guy wants to teach you series.’ There are many tools that I use in my day to day work as an IT guy. A lot of them also come in handy when troubleshooting my home PCs or just getting something computer related accomplished. Probably one of the most useful tools is one of the simplest; the command prompt.
Command prompt has been included on every OS/2 and Windows NT – based operating systems (2k, XP, Vista, 7). It is an analog of command.com in MS-DOS. What it does is give the user access to dos commands inside of the windows shell. This means that unlike command.com which is internal to DOS, cmd.exe can take advantage of features available to native programs in the operating system.
Besides all that technical mumbo jumbo, the command prompt is a very useful tool. First off, how do you open it? It’s very simple. Just go to start->run and type in cmd. You can also go to start->programs->accessories and run it from there. With this open you can run commands directly in their directories, delete or copy files, check your networking status and the networking status of other machines and remotely run scripts on your computer or other computers.
Because all commands in the command prompt work relative to the directory they are in the first thing you need to learn is to change directories. To navigate through directories in the command prompt you can use the change directory command (CD). CD is relatively simple to use. After the command prompt is open simply type CD and then the path you want to go to; cd windows. If you want to go more levels in all you need to add is a backslash; cd windows\system. When you are navigating through directories you can take a look at them using the directory command (dir). They are a lot of switches that come with most commands. DIR isn’t an exception. To see what options certain commands have type /? after them. For example with dir you can search through directories using the /s switch. Depending on the directory, this could be quite a large list. To be more specific you can put file types after the /s; dir /s *.exe.
You can also do a lot of very useful network troubleshooting with the command prompt. Every computer has an IP address (we’re not going to get into that here). Your IP address is necessary to communicate with other machines. To find that out you can go to the command prompt and type in ipconfig. There are a number of switches associated with ipconfig; /release, /renew, /flushdns, /registerdns. Sometimes fixing a network problem is simply a matter of renewing your ip address and flushing/reregistering your DNS entries. You can also lookup the ip address of machines on your network if you know their names and lookup their names if you know their ip addresses with nslookup. To do this type nslookup, this will bring up a new prompt. In this prompt simply type in the information that you want looked up.
We could talk about the command prompt all day long. There is a ton of commands and a ton of different things you can do. My best advice would be to open it up, shake its hand and see what it can do.
Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
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